Tag Archives: experiences

A few days ago, I had gone out for a vacation, that’s why there was no post for a couple of days. But this short vacation that I went on, was quite inspirational and insightful.

The place that I visited in my vacation was a hill station in Gujarat, India. It is about 1000 meters from the sea level. Like any other hill station, it has lush greenery and a mountainous landscape. There were many tourist points, and the one that instigated me to think, was the Table land. It is plateau on top of hill, where you can do a number of things- that are quite missing in an urban life, like riding a horse, etc. This plateau is surrounded by declines and ascends of land, which appear like folds on a crumpled bed sheet. The day I visited this amazing landscape, I was quite ebullient and excited. With that rabid enthusiasm running through my veils, I tried to climb a dangerous high point on this ironically flat land. My mom and dad watched me from a distance; they were keenly observing me with a particular shrewdness a parent watches. And at that point, I SLIPPED; luckily I was able to hold on to the safety railings. By seeing me almost fall down from a steep point, my parents were furious, but there is where the insightful moment lies.

Zenith Point on the table land

As I tightly held onto the guard rails, almost coming too close dangerous to the point that I almost went tumbling down from the zenith point, my dad looked at me, and gave me an uneasy smile, and he said,” A man in his life has to answer 2 principal questions- one is what is his role in this world? And what is his fate rather he should have the ability to recognize and acknowledge his fate. And you young man, are not properly answering these 2 questions and delving into completely unknown territories!” Well my dad was quite implicit in what he said, his underlining message was quite clear- Be careful, but he unknowingly triggered in my mind a series of thoughts about this mysterious concept- fate and its recognition in your life. These 2 questions are the main basis on which the heavy metal legends Iron Maiden compose their melodies rather a more appropriate word would be anthems. These songs are enigmatic, and get me thinking each time I listen to them. Similarly, what my dad said was a general truth. These 2 questions have to be answered by each and every person born on this planet. But the thing that really got me thinking was predetermination of fate and rigidity of the future. The general truths posit that fate and future is rigid, stubborn, and unchangeable. These 2 things cannot be altered or changed.

A memorable quote from Terminator 2

At this point, I beg to differ. I don’t think this is the case after all. Our actions have consequences, and as we progress in this ’brave new world’, our choices determine the path of our fate. This reminds me of my personal favorite and world-renowned Sci-Fi movie series- Terminator. The theme of this series deals with the inevitability of the future, and how the characters- Sarah Connor, John Connor, Terminator try to alter this inevitability. It also deals with the dilemma one faces when one has to take responsibility of his/her fate. In this world, we too go about in a similar way, we struggle with fate, with our future not consciously but our choices underline this aspect. This reminds me of another saying-

“What goes around, comes around”

This truth is also based on the fact that the future and our fate are changeable, and that our actions we take in this world are consequential.

I guess in our life, we struggle with these 2 choices- one is where we have to accept what fate has to offer to us, and the other is where we have to make our own fate.

I was surprised that this unfortunate fall would turn out to be so philosophical and insightful.

Flight, a place where all your inner fears about manners come to life. Moreover, it is at this place where you become self-conscious about your body language, the way you speak to the flight attendants and not to forget the fear whether you are eating properly or you are eating like a boor . I have traveled by flight, a number of times. One thing I can say with assurance is that each experience is different. Moreover it depends on who you are sitting besides. But, there is one thing in all this, each experience teaches you a different lesson in life. Even if it is for a limited period, you peek into somebody else’s life for a while, you get to know what kind of life they are living. Whether they are sad or happy or tensed or just tired, you observe that in no time. This experience taught me empathy, it highlighted the fact that, we live more or less similar life, the only difference is the phase we are in. The similarity between all of us is that even though we lead different lives, we face a similar set of problems interchangeably.

Sunset from one of my flight rides!

In one trip, I was sitting besides teenage boy. We bonded on a game I was playing and eventually started talking. Innocently he asked me,”In which grade are you in?“. In my mind, I had a small laugh, and told him I was in Masters Program. He was thrilled and surprised. And like any other gamers, we asked each other for game recommendation for android, realizing this he instinctively asked me which PC games do I play.

I said, “Well I’m quite old and I don’t play any computer games.”

To which he said, “Well my mom warned me that I could play computer games for only 1 more year after that my access to computer would be delimited for 3 years or so“.

After hearing this I was intrigued, so I asked him in which standard he was in, he told me he was in 9th grade. As he replied, his expression frowned, I understood what he felt, I too felt the same way when I was in 9th standard, my games were also shut down for 3 subsequent years. This just vindicated a notion I held dearly, everybody faces the same set of problems at one point of time or the other, and that everyone lives in more or less the same way. Thinking about all this, my flight time was up, an announcement from the flight deck said that the flight would land in 15 minutes. My thoughts rather my thought process which was relaxed for the entire time changed, now I felt a little tense, the reason for this being my routine would restart again. It is weird as much we want to run away from a routine, we too want order in our life. The flight landed, I went to the belt where my checked in luggage would be arriving, I again saw that boy, I smiled and told him to study well and wished him luck for his coming years. Hearing this, his face was a mixture of anxiety and fear, but he smiled, I immediately recognized that he must be hearing this from a lot of people. I too felt the same way when I was his age, I realized I was old now. I was not in the same phase,I was in a different phase of life. Yet I had experienced that phase too, after all everyone is relatively different but on a larger scale we are all the same.Continue reading In the Air→

It was lazy summer Monday, as I looked at my cycle, it reminded me that its tires had less air pressure in them. I went into my balcony to fetch my air pump, and went straight towards my cycle tires. Well as we all know this, filling up air into cycle tires, is not a piece of cake, and it is quite a ‘tiresome’ process. So as to reduce my physical misery, I plugged into my Ipod, and pressed the shuffle button on it.

Coincidentally, the first song which was played on my Ipod was my favorite song – Californication by the funk rock band Red Hot Chilli pepper. It is quite a relaxing listen, and while listening to this song, I was filling up air in my tires. The lyrics of the song went on as follows –

“Psychic spies from China try to steal your mind’s elation

Little girls from Sweden dream of silver screen quotations”

The lyrics of this particular song are quite spectacular in its own ways!

This song transported me into a new dimension. It was quite unusual phenomenon, despite the song being catchy, it didn’t distract me from the primary task at hand, rather it made me concentrate more on it. As I was filling up air, the bright sun rays which were falling on my cycle suddenly dimmed, as if somebody came up from behind me and drew the curtains. Initially I thought someone came up from behind me to prank me, but to my surprise there was no there, only I was there with my pump and cycle. I ignored this phenomenon, and continued filling up air, and again suddenly there was light on me, bright sun rays again fell on me. This particular activity went on for a while, as all these interesting things kept happening, in my headphone Californication played on. For all the people who haven’t heard this song, this song basically talks about how things go about in California, rather how California is actually Hollywood and vice versa. But I like to interpret it as a song about change. How seemingly random happenings in our world, have small but certain influence on our ways and perception of things around us. The bright and dim foreplay of the sun and clouds in nature, made me think about whether somebody was standing behind me. All I’m trying to say is that we are victim of changes occurring in this brave world. These changes may not always be pertaining to us, they may be occurring on a larger scale of things such as nature, but they do have an influence on us. In short, we can consider change to be happening/ incident in our everyday life, whose casualty is us. The causality can be a positive thing for some of us, on the other hand others may not cope up well with it. The positive or negative causality of change depends upon us, and our perception of change. As I’m lost in my thoughts, suddenly my mind is distracted in the right direction towards my headphone, which still played the same song.

The lyrics now says –

” The sun may rise in the east, at least it settles in the final location”.

At that moment, I realize that the “Sun” is the change, and East and final location(West) are our perception of change.

It was 11.15pm in the night, I’m conflicted between 2 thoughts – one to write an article about a certain idea I have in my mind, and my mind telling me you are too tried to concentrate. But I gave into my former thought, and started writing an article. But this article which I had started writing was different, it had no title on it, it was blank. Well I thought to myself, whether it was right to write a title of the article, or to write on with the flow of my thoughts. This time I chose the latter, and continued to lay down my story, my ideas on paper, without giving a thought about the petty title. By giving a title an article, I would confine myself only to a particular line of thought, and not go beyond that, on the other hand without a title, I would be like a tree who spreads its roots in all possible direction, and would expand on a variety of thoughts and ideas. All these thoughts made me think of the other writers, who are also writing , are they conflicted by such trivial things, or whether they just ramble on with their ideas. But I continued writing my thoughts, well by now it had an intro, and I was thinking about how to begin writing the body of the article, when I had this bright moment of epiphany.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. sir I salute you!!

We begin our life as a small child, full of innocence and undiscovered things and habits, we don’t as a child have a particular line of thoughts, all that we are confined to is the cycle of sleep-wake-cry-eat-poop-repeat. It goes on until we are old enough to think about which particular toy we like and we want, which color we like, which sport we like. Then as years go on, our line of thoughts starts getting narrower and narrower, we start developing likes and dislikes for a particular thing, we starting putting boundaries in our world, to confine ourselves to a particular set of experiences, and become completely immune to experiences which are not particularly our jam. I don’t think we should do such an unfeasible activity, at that moment I start removing the mental fences I had put up in my mind, and allowed my mind to drift into the unexplored territories without being afraid, that I might fail. If we fail, still we win, we become wiser, and if we win, we learn to push onto our limits. I start deconfining myself, by removing those mental fences. and at that particular time, I find myself, writing the end of the article. The body, which I had written, it had variety of thoughts, ideas and experiences all completely random, but somehow cohesive to one another. As I write the last sentence of the article, I realize one another thing, I forget to give a title. I think it would be appropriate to leave a blank space, at the place where I would be writing the title. It would be UNTITLED.

You must have come across this myth several times in your life- Nothing changes in a day but everything changes when you look at the big picture. We want our life, our routine to stay the same, but despite this we still want something interesting occurring in our life, so that it changes everything. It is ironical, but it is true. Wherever we like a certain spectrum of bands that play similar music( rock scene, pop scene), we make a vow to ourselves that we would listen to this music for the rest of our life, but as years pass unconsciously we change the music we listen to, and subsequently break that vow we made years ago.

The inspiration behind the post!! Thanks C.S. Lewis sir!!

This just highlights the most important aspect of our life- Change; Change is a factor that drives almost each and every aspect of our life. It is string of events that occur that change our situations in our life, they are good, bad, worst, but remember they are NEVER permanent. It teaches us to adept to this ever flowing river called life; the way we react to change makes everyone different. During my 2 months stint away far away from home. I got used to the hostel life, I truly enjoyed it, but when I came back home, I found it hard to get back to my normal life. The moral of the story is don’t make the mistakes I made, don’t get used to a particular way of life, don’t put your heart and soul to a particular way of life, in short don’t attach feelings/longings to a particular routine, adopt a simple principle- Change is the way of life. Have you observed a particular thing that happens to us when we’re listening to music, we tend to enjoy music when we are in a journey, or when we are in a transient phase, than when we are at equilibrium. This is just another way of life telling us that TO CHANGE IS TO GROW. Change is the only constant, embrace it not too tightly, but ENJOY it!!